Struggle to get refund from college

Nuraan Molti, who works in admin when she is not at home looking after her young twins, knows when the “paper pushers” are trying to pull the wool over her eyes.

This when she had to wait months for a refund from Damelin after her daughter, Aqeefah Martin, enrolled at the Mowbray campus to study for a degree in Applied Social Science.

Ms Molti said that Aqeefah, then 17 and in matric, was unable to get into the Cape Technikon or UWC, where she was provisionally accepted to study law, as her mid-year results were not good enough. So in September 2017 she registered at Damelin.

“We met with the consultant, Veruschke de Lange, and discussed the cancellation policy and Ms De Lange confirmed that ‘it’s two to three months’,” the Pelican Park mother said.

“So I paid the non-refundable R1 000 registration fee, and my father, Aboebakar Molti, paid the R6 500 course fee to guarantee her place in the class of 2018.

“My dad had email correspondence with Telisha Timmet and in writing said that apart from keeping the R1 000 deposit there would be no deductions from the R6 500 provided we cancelled four weeks before the academic year started on February 12,” Ms Molti said.

In the event Aqeefah “got spectacular results”, grandfather Molti made innumerable trips to UWC to make sure there would be a place for her “keeping in mind Damelin’s cancellation policy” as Ms Molti was at home with her twins.

When Aqeefah was accepted at UWC, Ms Molti sent a notice of cancellation to Ms De Lange on January 12 and she sent “me a myriad documents to sign, and I returned them on Monday January 15”, followed by Mr Molti’s bank statements, a certified copy of his ID and Aqeefah’s acceptance letter from UWC.

Ms De Lange said the refund would be made within 90 days and head office would notify them once the deposit had been effected.

But nothing happened, and neither did Ms De Lange keep the Moltis informed, despite her promise, although on February 21 she did say, “I handed the contract over to my administrator which processes the cancellation”. Then there was silence.

“In April, I contacted the Mowbray campus and Odile Cornelison advised me they were busy processing the paperwork and needed
a copy of Aqeefah’s ID which
was with the original documents I sent to Ms De Lange,” said Ms Molti.

To cut a long story short, Ms Cornelison said she would send the documents to head office when the scanner had been repaired.

It’s just a tale of incompetence, and when Ms Molti kept hitting the proverbial brick wall, she asked me to help.

Shane Shaw, group customer services manager for Educor, of which Damelin is part, said he was aware of the matter and had apologised to Ms Molti.

“The refund has been approved, and is now with our finance department for payment,” he said.

Which was done. However, not before the refunds administrator kept asking for Aqeefah’s bank account number when the refund was to be made to Mr Molti: she had all the details.

Clearly the refunds administrator can’t read or she doesn’t want to.

Mr Shaw later said that the clerk “forgot” to send the relevant application for a refund to head office, but the “necessary disciplinary action had been taken”.

“They’ve paid. Please record that they’ve never expressed any regret or apologised for the delay,” Ms Molti said.